Behind The Story
I’ve been trying a couple new things lately.
Might as well make it three.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing small companion articles for some of my shorts. They will explain the experiences or real world inspirations for the stories. Not entirely sure what the format will be yet, I plan on playing it by ear.
There are a lot of ways this could go wrong. I could ruin the “magic” or whatever. Someone could groundlessly sue me for libel because I used their likeness. Ugh. Speaking of, I’m going to go ahead and state this for posterity:
All of my short stories are fiction. Even when characters may appear to resemble living people they are amalgams of inspiration and my own creative process.
I can’t remember if it was by Blaise Cendrars or Louis Céline but a while back I read a line about who we as authors write about. To paraphrase: There is only one subject—humanity; and there is only one human—the author.
When all is said and done stories are reflections of their author’s mind. Even if they’re about something else, they’re really about the author.
CF. “On Exactitude in Science” by Borges and the map/territory relation.